Administrators and student leaders say that the next permanent College Dean has the potential to maximize the College’s gains from the campaign, particularly if he or she is called upon to serve a more active role in soliciting donations.

Within the next year, the man or woman whom Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith names as the 19th Dean of Harvard College will take charge of 6,700 undergraduates and a host of employees and administrators. But despite the breadth of this charge, the new Dean will find that many of the aspects of University life most relevant to the student body do not fall directly under his or her control.

Nearly two weeks after Cambridge police asked Secretary of the Administrative Board John “Jay” L. Ellison to help them respond to disturbances at several final clubs, Ellison said in an interview on Thursday that his role in such incidents is not to discipline students, but rather to prevent further harm.

Harvard students are notoriously wary of "dropping the H-bomb" in everyday life, and our collegiate version of noblesse oblige—the old “I go to school in Cambridge”—has become proverbial. But, at least in some countries, fans of the the Crimson seem to have fewer qualms about name dropping—especially if they’ve never set foot at Harvard.

Five Democratic candidates vying for a vacant congressional seat met in a crowded auditorium Monday night at the Institute of Politics—competing not for votes, but for volunteers among the Harvard College Democrats.

The resident deans hold a dual role within the framework of the College, interacting with students both as academic instructors and as House-level advisers. Current and former administrators say that over the past several decades the position has evolved from a role that drew an equal balance between scholarly and administrative work into a job that entails a sometimes overwhelming list of bureaucratic duties.

With Hammonds’s five-year tenure drawing to a close this summer, students and faculty say that this strong commitment to safeguarding her students was often impeded by unforeseen crises and administrative shortcomings. The dean who cared so much about protecting students, they say, could not get the job done.

Classmates and advisers remembered Joanna Y. Li ’12 as a kind and discerning friend who often went out of her way to help out those around her with a well-timed gift, a meaningful conversation, or a ukulele serenade. Li, who had been on leave from the College since February 2012, died on May 7 in her Somerville apartment.

Several upcoming projects—including the renovation of all 12 of Harvard’s residential Houses, the expansion of financial aid initiatives, and the construction of a new student center—suggest that a sizable chunk of the capital campaign’s proceeds will ultimately benefit undergraduates.

In a round of discussions led by administrators this past week, the Committee on Academic Integrity began a “consulting phase” to solicit feedback from members of the Harvard community on its proposal to create the College’s first ever honor code.

As a fatal shooting at MIT and the ensuing police chase created a sense of chaos in and around Cambridge, students said that infrequent communications from University administration left them worried and in the dark as a frightening situation developed nearby.

On Friday, as police lights flashed through their shuttered windows, Tsarnaev’s former coworkers and classmates were left to ponder an unsettling question: how could they reconcile the soft-spoken teenager they had known with the suspected terrorist whose flight left the greater Boston area in a state of fear-ridden lockdown for a full day?